Cuyahoga Falls school superintendent Edwin Holland has to pass a levy in May at his current job and then launch a November levy campaign for his new job as superintendent of the Cuyahoga Heights school district.

The invention of modern brain scanning technology has enabled neuroscientists to observe living brains in action, but the scanners require the subject to lie flat on their backs in big, bulky machines. Technology Review (MIT) reports the development of a miniature scanner so small and light a rat can wear it and scamper around naturally. That will allow neuroscientists to track the flow of chemicals such as dopamine while the rat learns new ways to get food rewards.

The device was designed to be used with ratsthe main animal model used by behavioral neuroscientists. But the researchers who developed the device, at Brookhaven National Laboratory, say it would be straightforward to engineer a similar device for people.

With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Pi is an irrational and transcendental number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating. The symbol for pi was first used in 1706 by William Jones, but was popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737. Learn more about Pi.

Here's a video of Harvard Medical School research published March 10 in Nature describing how scientists "crawled" through a mouse brain's cerebral cortex to map part of the neural circuitry that fired when they showed the mouse a movie.

Yesterday I linked to a video by cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Willingham about the flaws of using standardized testing to reward teachers with pay and /or tenure (see his video at the bottom of the post).

USA Today gives us another reason to be skeptical in a big project they're kicking off this week about cheating based on an analysis of the standardized tests of millions of students from six states and Washington D.C.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's State of the State address today is getting headlines for some of the jeering and boos he heard.

But when he talked about is concern over excessive felony sentences that ruin a person's employment chances for life, he got a standing ovation and plenty of applause. WKSU-89.7 has video of the speech. At minute 28, Kasich talks about the Kelley Williams-Bolar case:

Congratulations to Nordonia Hills, Hudson, Revere and Stow-Munroe Falls high schools for sending teams to the Ohio Science Olympiad tournament in Columbus next month.

They were the top four teams in a regional competition on March 5 at the University of Akron that comprised 14 teams from public and private high schools and middle schools. The state tournament will be held on April 30 at Ohio State University.

David Brooks' latest New York Times column "The New Humanism" contemplates an emerging enlightenment informed by disciplines of the brain and mind, including neuroscience. His sweep is broad:

This body of research suggests the French enlightenment view of human nature, which emphasized individualism and reason, was wrong. The British enlightenment, which emphasized social sentiments, was more accurate about who we are. It suggests we are not divided creatures. We don't only progress as reason dominates the passions. We also thrive as we educate our emotions.

Here's a video I took this morning of a project at Wadsworth's Central Intermediate School that required the 5th graders to interact via Skype with the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia. Wadsworth CIS, named an Ohio School to Watch this year, worked on an "e-mission" set in the year 2080 to save a space ship, The Distant Discovery, that is lost among the outer planets. The school got a $5,000 grant from Wheeling Jesuit University and a $5,000 grant from Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. Assistant principal Eric Jackson, seen in the video, wrote the grants with Jacinda Yonker, the talented and gifted coordinator at Medina County Educational Service Center, who used to teach in West Virginia and knew all about the Challenger Learning Center.

Superintendent Wayne Blankenship said, ''Discussions with the district's union leaders have taken place, making it clear the cuts are by positions, not people. We will let individuals know of the reductions by April 1, 2011.''

Yes, National Poetry Month is a month away, but it's never too soon to hear from one of my favorite poets, Charles Wright. Here's the National Poetry Month blog entry on Wright I wrote last year. Here is a video recently posted of Wright talking to PBS. I love to see him in his backyard, which I know so well from his poems, but have never seen.

Akron Public Schools spends money more efficiently in non-teaching areas of the budget than the four largest school systems in the state, according to a new report released Tuesday by Ohio Education Matters.